The Best Paleo Cinnamon Rolls (Ever)

I’m pretty excited about this recipe for a paleo version of cinnamon rolls! Growing up, my mom used to make the most insanely awesomely gooey sweet and buttery pecan cinnamon rolls imaginable. It was our family tradition to indulge ourselves in this fabulous treat every Christmas morning. Several years back however, that tradition faded away as we all became a bit more conscious of just how much sugar we’d rather not be consuming and, for me, how much better I feel when I don’t eat flour. I’ve tried on occasion to create my own paleo recipe for cinnamon rolls along the way since then but have always felt like the outcome has fallen short.

Until now.

These paleo cinnamon rolls are certainly no where nearly as sweet as the recipe I grew up with but I have found that they are just sweet enough to give me the perfect hint of the intermingled flavors I so love. The filling for these rolls is sweetened only by the use of chopped dates. If you feel so inclined, you can always add some honey or raisins to the mix to make the rolls sweeter. Also, if you choose to make and use the glaze, you’ll find that the additional sweetness of the two teaspoons of maple syrup goes a long way.

Now, for the dough. I have just recently started to use arrowroot powder in my baked goods and have been amazed at the results. The dough will seem rather sticky when you are done mixing it but as you work with it and use dustings of arrowroot flour along the way, you’ll notice the texture of the dough becoming more familiar. The “bread” portion of these cinnamon rolls is soft and light and expands beautifully as it bakes.

I hope you will enjoy this new recipe as much as I do. Perhaps it will even become a new holiday tradition!

PS. If you haven’t yet seen my Holiday Recipe Book, you may enjoy the recipes over the holiday season.

Paleo Cinnamon Rolls

Serves 6

The dough:

1 ½ cup almond flour

3/4 cup arrowroot powder, plus more for dusting

1/2 cup grass fed butter or coconut oil

1/2 cup water

1 egg

The filling:

½ cup dates, roughly chopped

½ cup roughly chopped pecans

2 tablespoons cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter or coconut oil, melted

The glaze:

4 tablespoons unsalted grass fed butter or coconut oil, melted

2 tablespoons arrowroot flour

2 teaspoons maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a baking dish and set aside. I like to use an 8″ round pie plate.

Melt butter or coconut oil in a medium saucepan. In a separate bowl, mix water with arrowroot until smooth.

Over low to medium heat, add arrowroot mixture to oil, stirring constantly. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens and no longer sticks to the side of the pan. It will come together like an oily, sloppy mass.

Place arrowroot mixture in the bowl of a food processor. Add almond flour and blend until consistent.

Add egg and blend. The mixture will be like a very sticky, wet dough.

Dust a two foot length of cellophane with arrowroot powder.

Place dough on cellophane and roughly smooth the surface of the dough using a spatula. Dust arrowroot powder on top of the dough.

Place another piece of cellophane on top of the dough.

Using a rolling pin, roll the dough until it is about 3/8-inch thick and roughly the shape of a rectangle.

Transfer to cookie sheet and place in freezer for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling by placing the pecans and dates in the bowl of a food processor. Blend until the pecans and dates are finely chopped. Add the cinnamon, blend again for a few pulses.

Remove dough from freezer and remove the top sheet of cellophane.

Brush dough with melted butter or coconut oil.

Sprinkle the pecan mixture evenly over the top of the dough.

For more, smaller rolls, start from one of the long sides of the rectangle, carefully roll the dough into a log. For bigger rolls, start rolling from one of the short sides. I find that the bottom sheet of cellophane is helpful for pulling the roll of dough onto itself and into a tight log.

Cut the log into 1-inch segments and place in baking dish.

Bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown, then cover loosely with foil and bake 10 minutes more until completely cooked.

That is a great question! Honestly, I’ve have not yet tried so I don’t know if it will work to make these the night before. If you do, please let us know how it goes. I’ll try as well (not sure if I’ll have time before Christmas) and will update the post with that info once I know. Thanks for your comment!

I went ahead and made another batch of cinnamon rolls last night through step #15. Then, I wrapped the roll in cellophane and refrigerated overnight. This morning I cut them into individual rolls and baked. My overall opinion is that they did not come out quite as well as they do when you bake them right away but they were still really good.

I make “conventional” cinnamon rolls from scratch for Christmas morning which, of course, I can’t do all that morning, so I have started making them in advance, cutting them, putting them in a round baking pan and then freezing them at that point. I take them out of the freezer on Christmas Eve and let them defrost and rise over night, so that when we wake up on Christmas morning, they’re ready to roll. (Pardon the pun.) I’m going to experiment with doing something similar with these prior to Christmas–making them, cutting them, and then freezing them and letting them thaw overnight to bake alongside the conventional cinnamon rolls for the rest of the family that will want those. I’ll report back between now and December!

I made these last night and they were very good! The dough was very easy to roll out which I was worried about. I thought that perhaps the dough could have used a bit of sugar in it itself, but once it was all assembled with the frosting, it all went together quite well. I changed the frosting a bit by adding coconut butter to increase the amount and thicken it a bit, and used a handheld mixer to get the texture better. The rolling part was the toughest and mine didn’t look very pretty at all. I needed to roll it much tighter so I’ll remember that next time. I used coconut oil in the dough and then ghee for the center (which didn’t take the whole amount) and topping. Thanks for the recipe! Fun way to celebrate my mom’s birthday with a treat I can eat too.

For this recipe I have been using Bob’s Red Mill brand for both the arrowroot and almond flour. Because I live in a fairly remote town, I don’t have any other options of different brands to choose from so I can’t speak to variations in results due to how finely the flour is ground. Hope that helps!

Liz,
I always use the blanched almond flour from Honeyville.com. It is free of the almond skins, unlike almond meal or other almond flours and is ground finer so cooks things with a much lighter, fluffier texture in comparison. They have a 10-15% off sale fairly often and if you have friends also interested they have a 25lb. box that is cheaper per pound. I do this with a couple friends. Hope this is helpful. Happy baking!

I modified this by use less almond flour (which is quite costly) cutting it by half, and putting the rest as golden flaxseed (meal, can buy the seeds and do it in a coffee grinder!), I had to cut the oil by a little in my 2nd batch as the first turned out too oily (with flaxseed meal), but it was absolutely perfect after cutting about 1.5Tbps of oil out of the arrowroot mixture. I also experimented with some of the rolls having a bit of swerve sweetener in the filling, and it made it more acceptable to those just coming into paleo or not paleo at all but wanting to have something a bit healthier.

The icing, for me did not turn out well, the arrowroot made it almost like a string cheese jelly, I instead made icing without the arrowroot as a drizzle, and then some with the swerve turned out quite well even with the arrowroot as the swerve helped to balance the gel aspect to the oil.

I’ve just made these for the second time. The best Paleo cinnamon rolls, tastes like the ones my mother used to make. The second batch almost picture perfect. Thanks so much for sharing this (& all your) recipes.

Additionally, I made the first batch using all butter, the second batch with butter & coconut oil. I liked the taste of the first batch, second batch was a little tough. Will stick to the all butter recipe.

Hi Jodi,
Dates are sweet, but also contribute greatly to the texture of these cinnamon rolls. You could try substituting raisins, but I feel like the dates will add more moisture to the finished product. Please let us know how your experiment went!
Best,
Allison

I made this this morning for a new years treat. Wow!!!! They turned out amazing!!! Here are the modifications i used. I used grass fed butter for everything except the frosting. I also added gelatin to the crust to help it bond better. For the filling I put half the cinnamon with the date and nut mix. For the other half I mixed with coconut sugar and sprinkled on the crust before spreading the date mix. I found the date and nut mixed hard to spread so I put the parchment paper back on top and gently rolled it out. This recipe is the closest thing I’ve had to grain cinnamon rolls. Thank you!!!

I didn’t have good luck. I used almond meal (pulsed it extra in my food processor before) and used tapioca flour in lieu of arrowroot. They didn’t really rise/change shape. Any idea which was the issue?

Did anyone else’s turn out crunchy? Mine didn’t seem to rise that much and turned out almost crispy like a scone. They were still so good though. I’m just wondering what the texture is supposed to be. If it’s supposed to be like cinnabon, then I’m way off. Maybe my 3/8 inch thick dough was off. That’s so specific and I’m sure I didn’t get that totally right. Anyway, I will try them again for sure because they taste awesome. Thanks!

Not sure what happened. Its possible that the arrowroot mixture thickened too much. It also could be the thickness of the dough or even the temperature of your oven. If you try them again, please leave a comment if you were able to fix the issue. They should turn out soft and chewy – very close to a typical cinnamon roll.

I just saw this recipe on Pinterest and of course, pinned it to my low carb board. One quick question: Is arrowroot powder the same as arrowroot starch? I have some arrowroot starch that I use in place of corn starch, but will purchase arrowroot powder if that is a different product.